“By your face I see how well you understand me,” she sneered. “The trouble concerns Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye.”
“From Paris—does it come from Court?” His voice was sunk.
She nodded. “You are a miracle of intuition today, Tressan.”
He thrust his tiny tuft of beard between his teeth—a trick he had when perplexed or thoughtful. “Ah!” he exclaimed at last, and it sounded like an indrawn breath of apprehension. “Tell me more.”
“What more is there to tell? You have the epitome of the story.”
“But what is the nature of the trouble? What form does it take, and by whom are you advised of it?”
“A friend in Paris sent me word, and his messenger did his work well, else had Monsieur de Garnache been here before him, and I had not so much as had the mercy of this forewarning.”
“Garnache?” quoth the Count. “Who is Garnache?”
“The emissary of the Queen-Regent. He has been dispatched hither by her to see that Mademoiselle de La Vauvraye has justice and enlargement.”
Tressan fell suddenly to groaning and wringing his hands a pathetic figure had it been less absurd.
“I warned you, madame! I warned you how it would end,” he cried. “I told you—”
“Oh, I remember the things you told me,” she cut in, scorn in her voice. “You may spare yourself their repetition. What is done is done, and I’ll not—I would not—have it undone. Queen-Regent or no Queen-Regent, I am mistress at Condillac; my word is the only law we know, and I intend that so it shall continue.”
Tressan looked at her in surprise. This unreasoning, feminine obstinacy so wrought upon him that he permitted himself a smile and a lapse into irony and banter.
“Parfaitement,” said he, spreading his hands, and bowing. “Why speak of trouble, then?”
She beat her whip impatiently against her gown, her eyes staring into the fire. “Because, my attitude being such as it is, trouble will there be.”
The Seneschal shrugged his shoulders, and moved a step towards her. He was cast down to think that he might have spared himself the trouble of donning his beautiful yellow doublet from Paris. She had eyes for no finery that afternoon. He was cast down, too, to think how things might go with him when this trouble came. It entered his thoughts that he had lain long on a bed of roses in this pleasant corner of Dauphiny, and he was smitten now with fear lest of the roses he should find nothing remaining but the thorns.
“How came the Queen-Regent to hear of—of mademoiselle’s—ah—situation?” he inquired.
The Marquise swung round upon him in a passion.
“The girl found a dog of a traitor to bear a letter for her. That is enough. If ever chance or fate should bring him my way, by God! he shall hang without shrift.”
Then she put her anger from her; put from her, too, the insolence and scorn with which so lavishly she had addressed him hitherto. Instead she assumed a suppliant air, her beautiful eyes meltingly set upon his face.
“Tressan,” said she in her altered voice, “I am beset by enemies. But you will not forsake me? You will stand by me to the end—will you not, my friend? I can count upon you, at least?”
“In all things, madame,” he answered, under the spell of her gaze. “What force does this man Garnache bring with him? Have you ascertained?”
“He brings none,” she answered, triumph in her glance.
“None?” he echoed, horror in his. “None? Then—then—”
He tossed his arms to heaven, and stood a limp and shaken thing. She leaned forward, and regarded him stricken in surprise.
“Diable! What ails you?” she snapped. “Could I have given you better news?”
“If you could have given me worse, I cannot think what it might have been,” he groaned. Then, as if smitten by a sudden notion that flashed a gleam of hope into this terrifying darkness that was settling down upon him, he suddenly looked up. “You mean to resist him?” he inquired.
She stared at him a second, then laughed, a thought unpleasantly.
“Pish! But you are mad,” she scorned him. “Do you need ask if I intend to resist—I, with the strongest castle in Dauphiny? By God! sir, if you need to hear me say it, hear me then say that I shall resist him and as many as the Queen may send after him, for as long as one stone of Condillac shall stand upon another.”
The Seneschal blew out his lips, and fell once more to the chewing of his beard.
“What did you mean when you said I could have given you no worse news than that of his coming alone?” she questioned suddenly.
“Madame,” said he, “if this man comes without force, and you resist the orders of which he is the bearer, what think you will betide?”
“He will appeal to you for the men he needs that he may batter down my walls,” she answered calmly.
He looked at her incredulously. “You realize it?” he ejaculated. “You realize it?”
“What is there in it that should puzzle a babe?”
Her callousness was like a gust of wind upon the living embers of his fears. It blew them into a blaze of wrath, sudden and terrific as that of such a man at bay could be. He advanced upon her with the rolling gait of the obese, his cheeks purple, his arms waving wildly, his dyed mustachios bristling.
“And what of me, madame?” he spluttered. “What of me? Am I to be ruined, gaoled, and hanged, maybe, for refusing him men?—for that is what is in your mind. Am I to make myself an outlaw? Am I, who have been Lord Seneschal of Dauphiny these fifteen years, to end my days in degradation in the cause of a woman’s matrimonial projects for a simpering school-girl? Seigneur du Ciel!” he roared, “I think you are gone mad—mad, mad! over this affair. You would not think it too much to set the whole province in flames so that you could have your way with this wretched child. But, Ventregris! to ruin me—to—to—”
He fell silent for very want of words; just gaped and gasped, and then, with hands folded upon his paunch, he set himself to pace the chamber.
Madame de Condillac stood watching him, her face composed, her glance cold. She was like some stalwart oak, weathering with unshaken front a hurricane. When he had done, she moved away from the fireplace, and, beating her side gently with her whip, she stepped to the door.
“Au revoir, Monsieur de Tressan,” said she, mighty cool, her back towards him.
At that he halted in his feverish stride, stood still and threw up his head. His anger went out, as a candle is extinguished by a puff of wind. And in its place a new fear crept into his heart.
“Madame, madame!” he cried. “Wait! Hear me.”
She paused, half-turned, and looked at him over her shoulder, scorn in her glance, a sneer on her scarlet mouth, insolence in every line of her.
“I think, monsieur, that I have heard a little more than enough,” said she. “I am assured, at least, that in you I have but a fair-weather friend, a poor lipserver.”
“Ah, not that, madame,” he cried, and his voice was stricken. “Say not that. I would serve you as would none other in all this world—you know it, Marquise; you know it.”
She faced about, and confronted him, her smile a trifle broader, as if amusement were now blending with her scorn.
“It is easy to protest. Easy to say, ‘I will die for you,’ so long as the need for such a sacrifice be remote. But let me do no more than ask a favour, and it is, ‘What of my good name,